Tuesday (26 Feb) - An Army of Children

Tuesday (26 Feb) - An Army of Children

On Monday Fist's team of battle pets took on the six Pandaren Master Tamers. These six Tamers are all that stand in the way of reaching the biggest, baddest Tamer of them all, Grand Master Tamer Aki.

The six Tamers proved challenging for my first run through, and I had to make as many as three attempts on some of them before they went down. The team persevered, though, and late in the afternoon Fist brought her best to face Aki.

I don't recall what set of pets I started with, but they weren't ready for the Lightning Storm that hammered the team for nearly the entire fight. Another stunning discovery was that Aki's three pets were all Legendary! That is a level above Rare. Aki won that battle. Bloodied but determined, the new line up was Bad Kitty (my big gun mechanical cat), Peddlefeet (some humanity and staying power), and the Effervescent Glowfly. It was a brutal battle. Aki kept moving his pets in and out, with the team trying to keep up. Bad Kitty did his job, taking out one of the legendaries, and stepped back to lick his wounds. Peddlefeet engaged and did his best, staying alive a long time but finally failing. Glowfly finished the job on Aki's #2 pet, but could only graze the third and final pet before he fell. The contest came back to Bad Kitty, badly damaged and in poor health. Bad Kitty wasn't likely to survive a full three round wind up for a kill, but her opponent was still in good shape and I had no choice but to go for the big hit. Bad Kitty died after two rounds. The mechanical cat can resurrect once, however, and did. Was the resurrected health enough to survive one more round? Aki's pet struck, and Bad Kitty was still standing at 90 health. Bad Kitty got the full three round wind up, executed the attack, and Aki's final pet died. Fist's team had won.

The Tamer quests are done. There are still the dailies to defeat the Grand Master Tamers if I want to do them. In addition, Fist's team now has the coveted Safari Hat, the prize for completing all the quests, which increases pet experience gains by 10%.

There's one more thing, but I need to whisper it. I still have duplicate battle pet quests for Outland and Northrend. I don't know how long this will last, but I'll keep doing them as long as I keep getting pet supply goodie bags. Don't tell Blizzard.

Fist's team took a break after the Tamers and decided to help out with the kids.

Fist wanted a better accounting of her battle pets. More specifically, she wanted to measure low level pets (rare quality only) to determine which should get priority for leveling. As it turns out, there were a lot more of them than I could have imagined. It is difficult to compare pets of different levels by just looking at them. There is also the Pet Breed website which can display every combination of stats and abilities a pet can have at any level. However, I didn't really glom onto that until I was halfway done. Besides, what fun would it be just reading data on a website? It was more fun to take every rare pet below level 6 and get them all to that level. Yes, all of them. That added up to 18 different, rare, level 6 battle pets. Below is the results. Using the pet breed website, I was also able to add all my level 25 pets and their stats as they were at level 6. The indented/Bold pets are level 25s using their stats at level 6.

Top Health Pets
   548 - Shimmershell Snail (Critter)
529 - Irradiated Roach
   509 - Lost of Lordaeron (Undead)
   509 - Strand Crawler (Aquatic)
   486 - Softshell Snapling (Aquatic)486 - Mr. Grubbs
486 - Singing Sunflower
486 - Turquoise Turtle

Top Power Pets
90 - Lil' Ragnaros
   86 - Lil' Deathwing (Dragonkin)
82 - Twilight Spider
78 - Snow Cub
78 - Stinker
77 - Fluxfire Feline
   77 - Fluxfire Feline (Mechanical)
   77 - Core Hound Pup (Elemental)
   77 - Perky Pug (Critter)
Top Speed Pets
   82 - Cat (Beast)
   78 - Peddlefeet (Humanoid)
   78 - Alpine Foxling (Beast)
   73 - Dancing water Skimmer (Aquatic)
   73- Eternal Strider (Aquatic)73 - Little Fawn
70 - Cinder Kitten

Below are the Level 25 Pets that did not crack any of the Top categories. This does not mean they are bad pets, just that they have no single stat that is outstanding.

Arcane Eye (Magic)
Effervescent Glowfly (Flying)
Highlands Turkey (Flying)
Infinite Whelpling (Dragonkin)
Spirit of Competition (Dragonkin)

Now that I've spent some time on the pet breed website, I know I can do a similar comparison showing what a lower level pets' stats will be for any level up to the max 25. That should help me decide which pets to focus on. Then again, maybe cuteness counts for even more. Cinder Kitten is the obvious choice in the "I'm really cute" category, but then saw the Brilliant Kaliri. She is such a beautiful bird, a pet I had forgotten I even had. Cat and bird. I wonder how that will turn out.

By the way, I had heard of the pet battles tab in the Auction House. Fist took a look at it for the first time on Monday. Oh my. Happy is going to have to hide his gold.

Final Note:

Late Tuesday night the pet battle teams of Sin and Fist went at it again. The results were slightly different from the last time the two teams met, when Fist's team went 4-2. Sin ran the table this time, slamming Fist's team and winning all six battles. Fist has her work cut out for her.

Sin then gave Fist the final whammy. She wasn't done with the Tamers. There is another four still to conquer, called the Spirit Tamers. Never heard of 'em, didn't want to hear of them, but now I've got to go after them. As soon as I figure out who and where they are.